The Seven Devils
by Rebecca Pierce
Summary: The first rule of the Doctor for any companion was not that they shouldn't wander off, but that he lied. Nothing was impossible. Not for the Bad Wolf, not for Rose Tyler, and certainly not for them. And if she had to tear every universe apart to find him, she would. Even if it cost her what little sanity she had left.


A/N: I've been sort of pecking away at this for a while. Seven shots, all based on Rose's travels through the dimensions searching for the Doctor. For the most part these will be crossovers, but I know for sure one will be still in the Who universe. Overall this is based on the song by Florence+the Machine by the same name.

Love that woman's voice!

On another note: **SPOILERS FOR ANY WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE END OF SHERLOCK!**

Also, I am making absolutely no profit for this and expect nothing in return except some feedback. This is my first Who and Sherlock included story, so yeah. Constructive criticism is highly appreciated especially since I'm just starting to sort of get a handle on the characters.

* * *

**Seven Devils: The First  
**

_Seven devils all around you_  
_ Seven devils in your house_  
_ See I was dead when I woke up this morning_  
_ I'll be dead before the day is done_  
_ Before the day is done_

_(Florence + The Machine)_

* * *

She lands with a sickening jerk of her stomach, and not for the first time, she bends at the waist immediately after and leans against the stone of the building she has come into existence near, retching up what little she has eaten. The twist of her insides is painful as it tries to expel everything the void seems to leave on, inside, and under her skin, down to her very bones. The dry heaves leave her nearly on her knees before, with watery eyes, she tries to relearn how to breathe.

She's shaking.

Closing her eyes as she braces an arm against the cool stones of the wall near her, Rose forces in several deep breaths and tries to will her stomach to stop working against her. Her skin is clammy and pale, and she doesn't know if she can take another jump between dimensions. It's a wonder she could make it all in one piece, though at times she wonders if she really has.

But now is not the time to wonder that.

If she couldn't compose herself, she was easier to make out from a crowd—she couldn't afford to have that happen, even if it seems she's alone here.

The trembling doesn't stop as she finally finds the strength to raise her chin and stiffen her spine, pulling a small mint out of her pocket and popping it in her mouth to rid herself as much as she could of the taste of sick.

The fact that she has made this routine now no longer phases her. If Jackie knew this, Rose is sure she'd have a field day with it. Then again, when was the last time she had seen her mum? By her own reckoning, it had been three weeks, but the passing of time depending on the varying universes screwed up any time sense the blonde could possibly have.

It should scare her, but it takes a lot more to do that now.

Even here, in the deafening silence of wherever _here _was, she isn't afraid. She couldn't afford to be, especially now that she felt that she's getting closer. The madman in the big blue box may have said it wasn't possible, but if there was something that Rose Tyler had learned long ago it was that he was prone to lie.

So even though her feet hurt from all the running and she couldn't remember the last time she ate, it didn't matter. What fueled her body now was the simple need to prove a single daft alien wrong.

And heaven forbid anyone or anything get in her way.

"_Allons-y!"_ Her mind supplies in the deafening silence. And so brow furrowing, she tries to get her bearings as pale hands are stuffed into side pockets of the blue leather jacket.

Grass and shrubbery dot the place, decorated in neat little rows with stones of different shapes and sizes. She pushes herself off the wall she's leaning on and swivels on a heel to follow the wall up to meet a roof and higher, a bell tower. Her gaze comes back down and around then—trees, sporadic but a good sign to reinforce the fact that there was oxygen available.

Last jump hadn't been fun—what with the lack of oxygen and all. Lucky for her, it had been a messy enough landing in an alien marketplace full of pseudo-humans that quickly got her some contraption that passed for an oxygen tank.

She bolted when the bill came.

Figures, that getting the maths done and being one hundredth of a decimal off could do that.

Her scan of the area continues as she shakes herself out of her momentary lapse into memory. There aren't many life forms. In fact, the only one she is truly aware of was what looked to be a man with his head bowed in front of a stone-

Oh.

She swallows thickly.

A graveyard.

How fitting.

And so the trek begins. First one foot and then the other somehow until finally she makes it to the front of the church where she hesitates. The doors are open to the warm breeze of the afternoon and the cross she sees gives her the hope that at the very least she's landed on Earth this time. She's learned not to judge by the sun, seeing as she had thought she'd landed on Earth once and found herself in a totally different galaxy entirely.

The equations would be the death of her one of these days—literally.

She's still staring at the cross, tongue running nervously over teeth as she shifts her weight from one leg to the other. If she was hoping to find her salvation sitting inconspicuously near a shadowy corner adjacent to the pulpit, she doesn't let on.

A sign would be nice.

"Did he answer it?" A deep voice asks behind her, making her jump. Rose turns then to regard the man whom she had blocked from entering into the church.

Well . . . she thinks he's a man. Looks enough to pass as one anyways.

Green. That's the first thing the blonde notices on him. Deep, clear, and cold. If she wasn't as seasoned meeting people (and other species) as she was, she'd say his eyes are beautiful. But there's some underlying feeling that they give her, as if as soon as his eyes had landed on her she had been placed under a microscope.

He doesn't move.

"'m sorry?" Is her cautious reply, licking her lips nervously.

Regarding her silently for a moment, he looks up and she follows his gaze to the cross inside the church.

"Were your prayers answered?" She looks then, really looks at the cross and asks herself that, carefully rolling the words around in her mind before turning to regard him again with tired eyes.

"I don't know." Is the honest, heavy, reply. "'s not like I prayed, though. I've just been sort of. . ." A shrug. "Hoping, I guess."

"Well, one is as foolish as the other." Taken aback by his answer, Rose doesn't reply.

He turns then and for a moment the blonde thinks he's staring at a line of shrubbery until she focuses past it and sees the man from before, head still bowed and shoulders heavy with his grief.

"Take John, for instance." He says, and she does. "To him, I am dead. But still, no matter what, he keeps hoping that I'll return. All that wasted emotion when he could be searching for anything to determine one way or another. Not complicated, really."

Almost instinctively Rose reaches up and touches his coat and he regards her action with some mild annoyance.

"I'm very much alive, miss. . ?"

"Tyler." She fills in, dropping her hand as her cheeks go pink. "Rose Tyler."

They both turn their attention to John and silence falls between them for a moment. The grief of the man in front of the grave chokes her with fear for the man she too was hoping to find and she wonders how it was that the being beside her could be as cruel as to lie to someone who clearly cared for him very deeply and was suffering through existence without him.

"You're a cruel person." She finally says, voice shaking. "Do you know what it's like to lose something so precious to you, so very fundamental that when it is ripped away you're left feeling like a shell?"

Something flickers in his gaze, but before she could latch onto it it's gone.

"Emotions are a waste of time, Miss Tyler. If John had really wanted, he could've already found me."

"But could he though? Could he really? Because if someone doesn't want to be found, they won't be."

Like the man with two hearts who left her stranded on a-

"If he really wanted to, he could've found me." For a second she almost felt that she was talking to the Doctor.

"_If she really wants to, she could come back to me."_

But could she really?

"Why must you make it so difficult? Why must there always be an obstacle in order to be with you?" And whether she's addressing the man beside her or the Doctor, she isn't sure anymore. "Can't you just make it simple for once? Just once? Why can't you accept that there's someone who loves you?"

Brown, curly hair blows in the wind but the man seemed unwilling to answer. Finally, when he's about to open his mouth, Rose cut him off.

"Forget it." Her eyes are glued to the back of the man who had decided it was time to leave his flatmate's gravesite. "Sometimes I wonder why I bother."

They stand there for a moment, watching John slowly make his way out of the graveyard.

"You think you have it all figured out." Is her sudden comment, said in a releasing of breath that could pass as a breathy laugh.

"I do." His annoyance is returning and he finds that he must prove it to her. "Your jacket is thin, worn, more like, and has seen much better days but there's something so fundamentally sentimental about it that you keep it. It's too cold outside to be wearing such a garment otherwise. Your shoes speak of much walking if the scuff and wear marks are anything to go by, and the way you have allowed the roots of your original color to show through your hair and scraped dark nail color reveals that there's something much more important to you that leaves your own well being as something for another time. There's dark circles under your eyes and your skin is pale from pushing yourself to continue. I would say you'll have malnutrition by the end of the week. The makeup on your face is light, as if you want to look good enough for what you find at the end of your obsessive journey but it has begun to smudge a bit from being on your face for longer than half a day, and the way you speak of John and I implies-"

"Nothing." She cuts him off, glaring at him for all she is worth. "Means nothing."

If there is a tremble in her voice. . . well, it can't be helped.

"If someone doesn't want to be found, he won't be. Were those not your exact words?"

Rose turns away from him, hands curled into tight fists at her side. Her jaw is clenches and she's trying not be reduced to tears by his words.

"Yet you keep trying like a petulant child."

She lets out a small laugh then, shaking her head in disbelief at his final summary of her. Oh, the stories she could tell him, the adventures, the things she has seen!

For one tiny moment she wishes she could. Even if it wouldn't ease the burden, knowing that someone could understand her plight would be nice.

But one look into his eyes and Rose knows he wouldn't believe a word.

"You know nothing, mate, really you don't. In fact, I do believe I'm wasting time here. See you 'round."

Not waiting for an answer, she swivels on her heel and makes to follow John. He may not know where to find the Doctor, but at the very least he could lead her into town. Weaving respectfully between graves, she tries not to look at the names written on the stones but can't help and be curious as she passes the one where John had been.

_Sherlock Holmes_, it reads. For a moment she is mildly surprised.

Fancy that, meeting a character from a book she'd read in the TA-

"Blimey." She mutters, turning away. Trudging further on, Rose soon finds her way out of the cemetery and looks up at to find a quaint little café on a nearby corner. It looks warm and cozy, but that's not what convinces her to follow John inside.

_Bad Wolf Hill Café. _

John is sitting alone at a table near the window.

The menu sits forgotten in front of him and she can't stand seeing this man so raw with pain and knowing his friend (boyfriend? Husband? Lover?) was out there. A git, but still alive. She resolves then to tell him and resolutely pulls out the chair in front of him like she's meant to be there (maybe she is? The words led her after all). But then as he looks up and their eyes meet the words die a premature death in her throat and leave her choking instead to swallow the hesitation down.

"Hello." She says instead. He doesn't answer, but then again he doesn't have to. The waitress sidles up to them and tea for two please, whichever is freshest or so Rose thinks she manages to say before settling herself against the wooden chair.

Again he says nothing. He's probably lost in the pain, Rose thinks, and she's drawn back to her own days when the walls had closed in around her.

Her own screams of anguish, the violent slam of her hands against the white wall that he most likely was next to in a twisted irony.

The tears—the never ending stream of tears.

"I lost someone too." She tells him as their tea is put before them. John seems to see but not really comprehend. He's too lost in the past to see the blonde young woman before him much even though his eyes hollowly follow her movements. "It was. . . like the world's collapsing but no one could see it but me."

Thin, pale fingers are trembling as she raises the cup to her lips, self-conscious suddenly, of her chipped nails.

"Still feels like it sometimes." A hollow little chuckle escapes, but she keeps her tears in check.

God, how she wishes she could help him. But she realizes now, what it is that stops her from saying anything. For starters, whatever the other man had done to convince John (_Sherlock_, she has to keep reminding herself) had been very, very convincing. Total, absolute. And two, the Doctor. . . well, he had always gone on about timelines and somesuch and how they could muck them up. So instead she continues with her own memories, allowing herself to get lost for a moment to this stranger.

She sees it in his eyes—he knows. He _understands. _

"You know, I look for him. I see a flash of hair-that gorgeous mess-and my heart just. . ."

"He's everywhere." John finally says, his own brown eyes glistening in the muted light. "In the slamming doors, the holes in the wall from when he got bored, the piles of random books that trip you all over the bloody flat, the experiments—_always_ the experiments—and. . . and the violin by the window."

"Those long-winded trains of thought-"

"The pacing."

"The manic grabbing and throwing of things."

"-especially as he's running out the door-"

"The way he never cleaned up his plate when he finished eating."

"In the furniture, how it's positioned just so to his liking."

"And the cups of tea forgotten _everywhere_ because 'Rose, you have to see this!'" She says in an exaggerated mimic of the Doctor's beckoning at all odd hours.

"The paper, magazines, the telly. He's literally _everywhere_."

"Yeah, he is." Rose says then, and starts laughing. _Laughing. _Uncontrollable little giggles that make her throw her head back as she blinks back tears. "Blimey, he _is._"

The blonde's pink lips start going into a half-smile without her noticing and John seems to mirror her. Nutters, the both of them, she thinks, but it can't be helped. Not now, not with pain that sings through their veins and makes them feel so alive in a world that's gone gray—or worlds, in her case thank you very much. "He's in that one long coat he goes nowhere without-"

"Oh, that bloody coat. Wore it everywhere, he did. You'd think-"

"He had nothing else to wear." Rose finished for him slowly.

"Yeah." John said then, offering her a tiny, hesitant quirk of his lips before looking down at the tea he would nurse for the next three hours on his own.

"Yeah." She agrees, looking down at her own barely touched cup.

"I don't know what to do." He finally blurts, looking up at her suddenly. The gleam in his gaze has gone from glassy with tears to manic with the sudden realization that there was still a clock ticking away, a world continuing even when his own had crumbled. "What am I supposed to do? I'm a soldier and a jobless doctor now. Bloody hell."

The cup fell from his grasp and spilt the brown liquid all over the table as he raised his hands to run them through his hair. "What do I do?"

"_**What**_do I _do_?"

Rose regarded him then in his mildly panicking state over the rim of her cup as she finally took a sip. Setting it down carefully, her pink tongue darted out to lick at dry lips. "What would. . . what would he have you do?"

John seemed to open his mouth to answer, brow furrowing as he latched onto the thought like a lifeline.

"I. . . I don't know."

Should he feel guilty that he didn't?

The blonde before him shrugs then, hoping to make it sound almost simple and the obvious to a world (worlds?) where nothing makes sense anymore.

"Then find out." Is her low reply, the hazel of her eyes glittering with purpose. John swallows then, for the first time in what seems to be forever feeling like there's something there, some tiny little inkling of hope that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out alright somehow. Not anywhere near the level they had been when Sherlock had been— from before. But at the very least _okay. _Functioning. Brain dead maybe, but functioning.

He could manage that much as a start, he guesses.

Figuring this is a good place to start as any he turns away from the window to tell the girl but he makes it only past one word before letting the sentence die in his confusion.

She's gone.

One moment she's there and then suddenly she isn't, and dear God he's gone mad, completely and utterly _mad_. Had it not been for the extra cup of tea he pays that had been left to cool in front of him, he would've never known if she had truly been there.

Let him wonder, or so Rose decides with a bit of pride over her dramatic exit as she runs out to scour the rest of the city.

It would be hours later then, once the Sun had been long chased away by the moon and its cooling embrace that Rose gave up.

Nothing.

Not a single trace of Bad Wolf anywhere to guide her. Even the sign of the café has gone back to normal and so she thinks her role has been played for now. Sighing tiredly, the blonde braces herself in the alley behind the café for a jump back into her dimension. She swallows hard, breaths in deeply and slaps the large yellow button before she could think again.

The jump is anything but smooth, her landing anything but graceful.

Damn to hell that stupid little decimal.

Nonetheless, in every jump from here on out, she resolves to make sure her makeup is impeccable.

Not that he'd notice anyways.


End file.
